Google invests £407m in Finnish data centre

Google is investing $608 million (£407 million) into its Finnish data centre in a bid to meet mobile video demand.

By
Sam Shead
| Nov 04, 2013

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Google is investing $608 million (£407 million) into its Finnish data centre in a bid to meet mobile video demand.

The investment will be used to expand the datacentre's capacity, according to Bloomberg.

The site in Hamina, some 150 kilometres outside Helsinki, was opened two years ago after Google bought a facility from a Finnish paper company for £170 million. Itis currently one of three Google data centres in Europe.

Google said the construction will provide jobs to 800 engineers and builders and the data centre's head count will rise from 90 to 125.

The data centre draws on seawater from the Bay of Finland for cooling and wind energy from Sweden for power as Google seeks to keep its environmental impacts to a minimum.

Google data centre manager Dieter Kern said: "Google is in Finland for the long term. We’re digging deep roots, both figuratively and in a concrete way.

Google also serves customers in Europe from data centres in Dublin, Ireland, and St Ghislain, Belgium.

Other large tech companies also have their data centres located in Scandinavia. For example, Microsoft announced in September it will invest £211 million in a new Finnish data centre, while Facebook opened its first non-US data centre in Lulea, Sweden, this summer.